Copernicus, "by help of his false supposition, hath made truer demonstrations of the motions and revolutions of the celestial sphere than ever were made before."[1]
Already, however, the Aristotelian dictatorship was being undermined, where it could not be overthrown. William Gilbert of Colchester, physician to Queen Elizabeth (whom he only survived a few months), deserves to be called the founder of experimental science in England. In his treatise "De Magnete," published in 1600, he brought together a copious store of facts, the result of his own patient investigations, and connected them by a consistent theory, thus starting the science of electricity on a career still full of promise for the future. He was not only a Copernican, but anticipated Galileo in an important correction of the Copernican theory, pointing out the fallacy by which a so-called "third movement" was considered necessary to account for the parallelism of the earth's axis of rotation.[2] In his youth he had studied on the Continent, and his works were there in great repute, while his own countrymen probably shared the half-contemptuous estimate of Bacon, who placed him but a degree higher than Paracelsus and the alchemists in the school of "fantastic philosophy."
With the opening of the new century, progress became more rapid. Harriot, the friend of Raleigh, made notable advances in algebra, and was among the earliest of telescopic observers; Napier published in 1614 his "Marvellous Canon of Logarithms"; and Harvey, whose theory of investigation was as sound as his practice was successful, began his immortal lectures "On the Motion of the Heart and Blood" in 1619. In the same year was born, at Toxteth, near Liverpool, a man whose name would assuredly have been as illustrious as it is now obscure, if a premature death had not cut short his labors before they had well begun.[3] Jeremiah Horrocks belonged to a Lancashire family of little pretension and less means. His puritanism was signified by his entrance at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and his poverty by his admission as a sizar, May 18, 1632. A passion for astronomy early seized upon him, but his tastes met with neither encouragement nor cultivation at Cambridge, which at that time afforded no form of scientific training. Books were his sole instructors, and his slender resources the limit of his choice. Indeed, his short life was one continued struggle against the tyranny of material difficulties. After a residence of three years, he left the university, summoned home probably by domestic exigencies, and spent his remaining years in the daily treadmill of tuition, or some equally harassing occupation. He
- ↑ "Companion to the British Almanac for 1837," p. 43.
- ↑ "De Mundo nostro sublunari," lib. i., cap. xi., p. 165, published (posthumously) in 1651.
- ↑ There is no positive evidence in support of the tradition that Horrocks was born in 1619. The fact that he was in orders and held a curacy in 1639 throws a doubt upon his age, as men are not ordained at twenty.
